And this is what you must
do for King Pluto."
"Never!" answered Proserpina, looking as miserable as she could. "I
shall never smile again till you set me down at my mother's door."
But she might just as well have talked to the wind that whistled past
them; for Pluto urged on his horses, and went faster than ever.
Proserpina continued to cry out, and screamed so long and so loudly that
her poor little voice was almost screamed away; and when it was nothing
but a whisper, she happened to cast her eyes over a great, broad field
of waving grain--and whom do you think she saw? Whom but Mother Ceres,
making the corn grow, and too busy to notice the golden chariot as it
went rattling along. The child mustered all her strength, and gave one
more scream, but was out of sight before Ceres had time to turn her
head.
King Pluto had taken a road which now began to grow excessively gloomy.
It was bordered on each side with rocks and precipices, between which
the rumbling of the chariot wheels was reverberated with a noise like
rolling thunder. The trees and bushes that grew in the crevices of the
rocks had very dismal foliage; and by and by, although it was hardly
noon, the air became obscured with a gray twilight. The black horses had
rushed along so swiftly that they were already beyond the limits of the
sunshine. But the duskier it grew, the more did Pluto's visage assume an
air of satisfaction.
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